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There is no larger, more monolithic group in the US with less power and with less representation at all levels of the civic and private sectors of American society. Of the 53 million hispanics, a whopping 33 million plus are Mexican American. This means that the current immigration impasse is largely, both internally and externally, a Mexican problem. You can think of it as a “Mexican American Problem” or as purely a Mexican problem but in any case, Mexican Americans are a relatively monolithic community with a strong sense of their past, and an ongoing connection to the mother land (incidentally, Mexican Americans do not have to divide their loyalties between North America, i.e., the USA, and modern day Mexico, because the lands between the Rio Grande and the territories beyond the Alamo have largely been one continuous playground to a Mexican community that can easily claim to be Native American. The so called “pilgrims” have a weaker claim.

Answering the question “Why have Hispanics/Latinos been in the US for so long and achieved so relatively little?” would go a long way towards unlocking America’s potential and promise of another American century of success. The clock is ticking and American leadership and policy makers are asleep at the wheel. The Latino community leadership is asleep as well…

“The Hispanic population grew to 53 million in 2012, a 50% increase since 2000 and nearly six times the population in 1970, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, the overall U.S. population increased by only 12% from 2000 to 2012. Hispanic population growth accounted for more than half of the country’s growth in this time period.

Much of the growth is occurring in a relatively small geographic area. A Pew Research Center analysis last year found that the 10 largest counties by Hispanic population accounted for 22% of the national Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2011. Half of these counties are located in California.

Nationally, Mexicans are the largest Hispanic origin group but the composition of origin groups varies by geographic area. For example, while Mexicans represent a majority of Hispanics in all but 11 states, Puerto Ricans are the largest group in New York and New Jersey and Cubans are most populous in Florida.”

American immigration enforcement is necessary. It’s goals and means at the present time may need reforming though.

Fueled by fear and political opportunity in the aftermath of the post 911 decade, this policy went into full force in 2010, despite the fact that so called “illegal immigration” had significantly tapered off. The Obama administration, nevertheless, went full force ahead with this policy to appease popular fears and to give a sense of being tough on crime and of being pro national security. It is clear that the affect of the current immigration policy is disproportionately falling on the Latino immigrants. It is also labeling them criminals. THIS POLICY MOST BE REASSESSED… In light of the hardships that illegal immigration causes for men and families running away from political, economic stress or toward the pull of the American dream, and the problems that it causes for an America whose labor markets have been themselves greatly stressed by the long, deep and lingering national recession, perhaps we need to take a good long look at how America is investing in its labor force and how it might better integrate and recruit needed talent from its neighbors to the south. America will continue to age at an alarming baby boomer pace, by the time we hear all the reports of the “unintended consequences” of the current skewed immigration policy it may be too late.

The report fails to mention the nearly 12 million people who are not in the country legally. According to the report only a fraction of this number (368,644) were removed, or deported, from our country. The report fails to discuss the apparent problem that this policy is disproportionately affecting Hispanic immigrants. For example, according to the PEW Foundation’s Hispanic Center:

People from Asia, for example, are underrepresented in the ICE immigration dragnet. The connection to immigration from the Eastern European former soviet block and Russian gangs, for example, is also missing from the national security report. Although we should not paint former Soviet block countries with a broad brush, the absence of many other groups from the demographics of this dragnet needs closer examination.

According to the most recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report, the principle investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “ICE has prioritized its limited resources on the identification and removal of criminal aliens and those apprehended at the border while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States.”

The data provided by ICE shows that most of the immigrants being affected by this policy are involved with the criminal justice system or are coming across our southern border from a handful of Latin American countries (see table 1 below). Coming across the border without appropriate immigration paperwork is itself a violation of our national laws.

“In executing these responsibilities, ICE has prioritized its limited resources on the identification and removal of criminal aliens and those apprehended at the border while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States. This report provides an overview of ICE Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 civil immigration enforcement and removal operations:

In FY 2013:

ICE conducted a total of 368,644 removals.

ICE conducted 133,551 removals of individuals apprehended in the interior of the U.S.

82 percent of all interior removals had been previously convicted of a crime.

ICE conducted 235,093 removals of individuals apprehended along our borders while attempting to unlawfully enter the U.S. 1

59 percent of all ICE removals, a total of 216,810, had been previously convicted of a crime.

ICE apprehended and removed 110,115 criminals removed from the interior of the U.S.

ICE removed 106,695 criminals apprehended at the border while attempting to unlawfully enter the U.S.

98 percent of all ICE FY 2013 removals, a total of 360,313, met one or more of ICE’s stated civil immigration enforcement priorities. 2

Of the 151,834 removals of individuals without a criminal conviction, 84 percent, or 128,398, were apprehended at the border while attempting to unlawfully enter the U.S. and 95 percent fell within one of ICE’s stated immigration enforcement priorities. 3

The leading countries of origin for those removed were Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.”

Too often, American public policy discussions are framed in single issue debates of pros and cons which make for great media theater and water cooler conversation–but never end in solutions… only in winners and losers. To be sure, the real losers are once again the shrinking middle-class which continues to see a broken Congress continue to destroy the country. An American dream Hollywood built and the middle-class made sustainable by working itself out of the working class and buying into the popular media illusion. This “progress” now seems out of reach for much of the children of that middle-class and for recent immigrants. So where is America going? What will happen to an America where honest and bipartisan discussion of real public policy problems is muffled by cable show sensationalism and campaign politics? Can we do better?

Immigration is not only about people staying in America without a proper visa or citizen status; it is also about the American continent and the millions of people that have called it home for well over a thousand years. From the perspective of native Americans the question is: Who is the illegal immigrant, pilgrim? This includes millions of modern day South of the border Latinos whose ancestors have roamed across the Rio Grande for thousands of years. From the perspective of the Eurocentric 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation American the clamor is: Go back to where you came from; you are not a real American. As America fails to sustain a middle-class and integrate new immigrants it dies a thousand deaths one broken dream at a time. Mortgage foreclosures, drug abuse, urban decay, and dead end jobs that cannot pay for healthcare or sustain a family are but a few of the pervasive signs that America is not only divided but headed in the wrong direction.

Complex public policy issues are never about one variable, one social or economic dynamic or simple yes or no choices. Today’s media industry continually portrays a false choice in a tug of war between one dimensional unilateral actions to protect the perceived interests of one side against those of another. In reality, public policy issues are characterized by complex social and economic dynamics that impact many publics and present several choices in terms of:

acting or not acting,

who (government or the philanthropic sector, for example) should act,

who should pay and

how much it will all cost.

The outcome of those choices and the quality of that debate ultimately impacts the cultural and economic health of the country.

American is killing its life source–IMMIGRANTS. As such, it is killing itself. For this we can all agree President Obama has failed to lead in this most important of public policy problems.

“AS A presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama promised to enact immigration reform during his first year in office. Although his party controlled both arms of Congress for the next two years, he barely tried. Instead, he has presided over the greatest mass deportation in American history. As our chart shows, he has tossed far more Mexicans and other illegal immigrants out of the country than his predecessors—nearly 2m so far. Spending on border security is now greater than on all other types of federal criminal-law enforcement combined. Since migrants bring youth, energy and enterprise, this is an expensive way of making America less dynamic (as our leader this week explains). And the human costs are immense (read our story here). Families are torn apart; lives ruined. Yet many House Republicans still insist that they will not back immigration reform because they cannot trust President Obama to defend the border.”

The American political and sociological imagination is fixated on a civil rights trajectory for Hispanics/Latinos. As if the civil rights movement could be extended or repeated, Hispanic/Latino demographics are constantly cast in the shadow and path of African American progress. But is this reasonable and likely?

The notion that communities have leaders is as old as Plato’s Republic and perhaps the Magna Carta. But how true is that notion for ethnic communities in the US?

Is there a leader or group of leaders of the so called “White community”? Is there a leader or leadership group of the so called “Black community” today we can readily and unanimously point to? Is the concept of “community leadership” historically and politically valid when it comes to defining communities that are diverse and geographically dispersed?

Perhaps there have been important leaders of visible political movements that have made a significant impact on the popular mind; but making the argument that there are definitive leaders of an entire community may not be as valid as defining the leader of a social movement with an obvious leadership voice and sometimes face; such as the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King. But Hispanics/Latinos have not had such a national movement and they are as diverse as the continents and countries their ancestors come from. So why do we insist in assuming that Hispanic/Latino contributions to and demands from the American polity will follow the same trajectory?

Although Hispanics/Latinos have surpassed African Americans as the nation’s largest minority group and have even become majorities in large and small geographic regions, they will not likely follow the same trajectory of the American narrative that follows the slave trade, the antebellum south, the civil war and modern civil rights. Perhaps the significant potential of Hispanic/Latino contributions to the American mosaic will be the shaping of how so called “non-White groups” impact the so called “mainstream culture.”

So where does this leave us for today’s so called “Hispanic or Latino” community? Is the notion that disparate and diverse loosely defined social groups, that have a leader or group of leaders that can speak for them, still valid today?

Three-Fourths of Hispanics Say Their Community Needs a Leader | Pew Hispanic Center

“Three-quarters of Latinos living in the U.S. say that their community needs a national leader, but about the same share either cannot name one or don’t believe one exists, according to a new national survey of 5,103 Latino adults conducted by the Pew Research Center from May 24 to July 28, 2013.When asked in an open-ended question to name the person they consider “the most important Hispanic leader in the country today,” 62% say they don’t know and an additional 9% say “no one.”In a follow-up question on how important it is for the U.S. Hispanic community to have a national leader advancing its concerns, three-quarters of Hispanic adults say it is “extremely” 29% or “very” important 45%.”

Can modern government police itself? Has the American government gotten too big and too powerful in the age of big data, billion dollar budgets and heated global competition for its centenarian constitution? Are we too quick to personify the bureaucratic colossus and expect it to respond like an ethical and nimble organization? Have citizens become too powerful, overwhelmed and confused when given access information and the ability to disseminate it to the four corners of the earth in one instant? Technology and humanity have finally reached a turning point. Human possibilities are magnified immensely by technology for bad and for good.

What is America’s relationship to the world as it looks out on the horizon of international intrigue and what is its relationship inward toward its citizens’ civil rights?

“THERE was something surreal, in a Kafkaesque sort of way, about Barack Obama’s press conference on August 9th. Aiming to ease concern over the government’s surveillance programmes, the president announced reforms that seem both obvious and overdue. Then he criticised the man whose actions set those reforms in motion.

The president’s proposals include creating a group of outside experts to assess the government’s balancing of security and privacy. (When in doubt, create a task force.) More substantially, Mr Obama said he would like to change the proceedings of the secret court that approves electronic spying and interprets counterterrorism laws. Whereas now the court only hears the government’s side of any argument, the president wants to see an opposing viewpoint represented.

Mr Obama also said he would work with Congress to create safeguards against abuse of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect data about Americans’ phone calls. The administration will release the legal rationale for its snooping …”

Do you speak Spanish? America, like the rest of the “Americas,” speaks Spanish quite fluently, prevalently and often. Despite the illusion that North America is monolingual and that being monolingual is somehow more “American,” the truth is that America has been multilingual for hundreds of years prior to the landing of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, followed by May and Flower–the Mayflower, that is, much later.

The original experience of the inhabitants of the Southwest, for example, included migration patterns by the native peoples of Central America across the Rio Grande and all the way up into the Dakotas and back. For over a thousand years, the natives of what much later became North America spoke numerous languages and roamed what would become America. The first settlement at St. Augustine, you could say, established the continent’s first European language–Español.

St. Augustine was founded forty-two years before the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, and fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts – making it the oldest permanent European settlement on the North American continent.

Today, America’s strong and vibrant Spanish heritage is prospering as many of us feel right at home speaking the original colonial language. According to the Pew Foundation,

“A record 37.6 million persons ages 5 years and older speak Spanish at home, according to an analysis of the 2011 American Community Survey by the Pew Research Center.

Spanish is, by far, the most spoken non-English language in the U.S. The next most spoken non-English languages are Chinese (with 2.8 million speakers), Hindi, Urdu or other Indic languages (2.2 million), French or French Creole (2.1 million), and Tagalog (1.7 million).

The number of Spanish speakers in the U.S. has grown rapidly in recent decades, reflecting the arrival of new immigrants from Latin America and growth in the nation’s Hispanic population. Today 34.8 million Hispanics ages 5 and older speak Spanish at home.

However, not all Spanish speakers are Hispanic. According to our analysis, some 2.8 million non-Hispanics speak Spanish at home today. That places Spanish at the top of the list of non-English languages spoken by non-Hispanics along with Chinese and ahead of all other languages.

(The U.S. Census Bureau measure of non-English language use captures how many people say a language other than English is spoken in the home but does not capture how well or how often the language is spoken).

Who are the 2.8 million non-Hispanics who speak Spanish at home? Some 59% trace their ancestry to non-Spanish European countries such as Germany, Ireland, England and Italy. An additional 12% say they are of African American descent. Nonetheless, about one-in-five (18%) non-Hispanic Spanish speakers trace their heritage to a Spanish-speaking country. By comparison, among the non-Hispanic U.S. population ages 5 and older, about two-thirds (64%) trace their ancestry to non-Spanish European countries, 13% say their ancestry is African American and 1% trace their heritage to a Spanish-speaking country.

Nine-in-ten (89%) of non-Hispanic Spanish speakers were born in the U.S., a share similar to that for all non-Hispanics ages 5 and older (91%).

The racial composition of non-Hispanic Spanish speakers mirrors that of the U.S. non-Hispanic population. Overall, three-quarters (77%) of non-Hispanics who speak Spanish at home are white, 14% are black, and 9% say they belong to some other racial group. Among the non-Hispanic U.S. population ages five years and older, 76% are white, 14% are black, and 9% are some other race.

Many non-Hispanic Spanish speakers reside in a household where at least one other member is Hispanic. Overall, 26% of non-Hispanic Spanish speakers live in these types of households. By comparison, just 3% of all non-Hispanics ages 5 and older live in such households.

Three-in-ten (28%) non-Hispanics Spanish speakers who are married live with a Hispanic spouse. By comparison, only 2% of non-Hispanics are living with a Hispanic spouse.

When it comes to English proficiency, eight-in-ten (80%) non-Hispanics who speak Spanish at home say they speak English “very well”, 11% say they speak English “well”, and 9% say they speak English “not well” or do not speak English. This compares with 96% of all non-Hispanics 5 years and older who speak English only or speak it “very well”, 2% who speak English “well”, and 2% who speak English “not well” or do not speak English.”

Newspapers are intellectual, cultural and political communication tools that require cultural competencies that reflect the diversity of publics being addressed. Minority employment in daily newspapers has been woefully lacking in the past decade or so. Very little progress has been made since the early 19902 which shows that the numbers have not only fallen as a percent of the total workforce but in absolute quantity since in 1991 the survey measured more total minorities in newspapers (4,900) than we have today (4,700). The numbers are shameful whether we measure ratios or absolutes. This disparity is surely to follow the media workforce online and the band plays on?

American demographics are being transformed by recent recessionary pressures on migration patterns. Also, Latino Americans have not only been growing numerically but in terms of being an increasingly larger portion of the populous for a significant period of time. We don’t have to be social historians to see it. It is increasingly evident. This means that the American social landscape is significantly becoming more Latino, especially in markets, cities, states and regions where Latinos have been a significant part of the polity and are beginning to have a voice. The implications for the coming elections, healthcare reform and workforce development needs, for example, are increasingly being discussed. The Pew Center for Research does a fine job of keeping us posted, along with The Policy ThinkShop, on these matters …

“The language of news media consumption is changing for Hispanics: a growing share of Latino adults are consuming news in English from television, print, radio and internet outlets, and a declining share are doing so in Spanish, according to survey findings from the Pew Research Center.

In 2012, 82% of Hispanic adults said they got at least some of their news in English,1 up from 78% who said the same in 2006. By contrast, the share who get at least some of their news in Spanish has declined, to 68% in 2012 from 78% in 2006.2

Half (50%) of Latino adults say they get their news in both languages, down from 57% in 2010.

The rise in use of English news sources has been driven by an increase in the share of Hispanics who say they get their news exclusively in English. According to the survey, one-third (32%) of Hispanic adults in 2012 did this, up from 22% in 2006. By contrast, the share of Hispanic adults who get their news exclusively in Spanish has decreased to 18% in 2012 from 22% in 2006.

These changes in news consumption patterns reflect several ongoing demographic trends within the Hispanic community. For example:

A growing share of Latino adults speak English well. Today 59% of Latino adults speak English proficiently, up from 54% in 2006 and 2000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Slowing immigration. As migration to the U.S. has slowed (Passel, Cohn and Gonzalez-Barrera, 2012), the share of Hispanic adults who are foreign born has declined. Today about 51% of Hispanic adults were born in another country, down from 55% in 2006 and 54% in 2000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Growing time in the U.S. With the slowdown in migration, the average number of years lived in the U.S. among Latino adult immigrants has grown, from 16 years in 2000 and 17 years in 2006 to 20 years in 2011.

U.S.-born Latino adults on the rise. Annually about 800,000 young U.S.-born Latinos enter adulthood (Taylor, Gonzalez-Barrera, Passel and Lopez, 2012). Many are the children of immigrants, and a significant share are third or higher generation. These groups are much more English proficient than are immigrants.”

Are we our brother’s keeper? America seems to be increasingly divided in its opinions in what happens, and even in simply taking notice.

The verdict in Florida regarding the shooting of an unarmed teen should raise concern and key questions about guns, court systems, legal justice, race relations, and many other issues of import for the state of our Nation’s social fabric and for the future of an increasingly diverse if separate America. This separation seems to include what we notice and what we care about.

Be sure to visit the Policy ThinkShop for commentary on the importance of what happened in Florida for how after the legal system addressed the death of Trayvon Martin millions of people might now see America and how America sees millions of people through the eyes of our local police departments and justice systems.

The Pew Foundation has released a troubling survey about apathy and neglect for matters that should matter to all of us…

“The final days of the trial of George Zimmerman, which concluded July 13 with a verdict of not guilty, attracted relatively modest public interest overall. In a weekend survey, 26% say they were following news about the trial very closely.

This is lower than interest in the initial controversy over Trayvon Martin’s shooting when it erupted last year. In March 2012, 35% said they followed news about Martin’s shooting very closely.

However, the story has consistently attracted far more interest among blacks than whites – and that remained the case in the trial’s final days. Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to say they tracked news about the Zimmerman trial very closely (56% vs. 20%).

Moreover, fully 67% of blacks say they watched at least some live coverage of the Zimmerman trial, compared with 38% of whites. About one-in-five blacks (21%) say they watched “almost all’’ of the trial coverage; just 5% of whites reported watching almost all of it.

The Pew Research Center survey was conducted July 11-14 among 1,002 adults. In 237 interviews conducted July 14, the day after the Zimmerman verdict, 29% say they were following news about the trial very closely.

The Zimmerman trial and Trayvon Martin shooting have drawn less interest than some other racially charged incidents in recent years, including the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict in 1992 (70% very closely) and O.J. Simpson’s arrest in 1994 (48%).”

We never think of ourselves as strangers, but others around us at one time or another surely will. For thousands of years groups of human beings have found ways to bond and build unity. Unfortunately, at the same time that we form the “we,” the “them” or the “other” is automatically formed. That is the fundamental basis of discrimination, judgement, bias and, yes, racism. It’s us against them. It’s “you and I are not the same and I don’t trust you.”

On that unfortunate night when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin met face to face, they both saw a stranger. George Zimmerman had already been armed and ready for “the stranger” and acted accordingly when he encountered a startled Trayvon Martin. Not much can really be said about that night because the only real witness was not a witness at all but a participant observer overwhelmed by his own fear, anger and pursuit of “the stranger in the night.”

Racism is but a word and concept that when put to the test of thought and reason falls short of describing the totality and complexity of many of the situations it, perhaps ironically, so often is a vital part of. Racism as an explanatory concept falls short because outside of “the human race” all the other constructs relating to race do not hold up to scientific scrutiny. There is only one kind of human being, though we are all quite different. Historically those differences have divided us and caused some of us to treat other people in inhumane ways. The construct of “White person” has been used historically to bring together a normally disparate collection of people. The early KKK included a diversity of people from different religions and ethnicities. This collection of disparate people were united in their apposition to the empowerment and liberation of antebellum South people–African Americans who had been enslaved because they were brought to America as muscle for work and were labeled, legally, as somewhere between animal and human. There is much psychosis and ill will in the history of the American Republic and as inheritors of that legacy, White people (however one defines the complex category) must live with that history. Black people must also live with that burden as victims and objects of hostility. As Americans, we all have a responsibility to address that past and to make sure that it does not dominate our present or future. There is no more important a challenge for the future of this Republic. America cannot go on closing its doors and incarcerating people who do not fit an antiquated norm.

America must work on reinventing itself and forging a culture that will better define what it expects from its citizens and one that is more attentive and inclusive of what it needs from the future than what it needs from its past. America must be more forward looking and embracing of people’s differences. That will not be easy… but it must happen. It cannot be done piecemeal through divisive movements and competition… Stakeholders in a future multicultural America must forge a value system that can be taught at home by parents, in school by teachers, at religious gatherings by spiritual leaders and in corporate America by managers. America increasingly looks different and we must figure out how to make the differences among us work if we are going to stay competitive in a competitive world.

Can America talk its way out of the race problem?

In important ways, racism speaks to the fears and phobias held deeply by people who fear black people, especially men America labels “black.” The reasons White people fear them may be debatable, but their discomfort with “the black stranger” cannot be explained away.

George Zimmerman was afraid and emotional enough that night, that he could not simply say: Good evening. What is your name? I am the neighborhood watch guy and I do not know you? Can we talk? Perhaps he could have said something like that and a simple conversation could have unraveled. Perhaps avoiding the confrontation that ensued.

When a person feels strong and negative feelings about another person, because they are strange and foreign to them, it is understandable. But when a person feels these feelings about a person who is black or African American, that person is acting on prior perceptions and images that are a part of American history and we, as a Nation, hardly know how to talk about that.

To be sure, the “we” here is those of us who frame these issues purely as racial, with little attention to the complexities that lead to intergroup mistrust and hostilities between so called “ethnic” or “racial” groups and the mainstream which is still presumed to be “White.”

But history is not simply Black and White. America is still not able to get over its “Black and White psychosis.” The mainstream American hegemonic culture has not processed differences and cultural conflicts between groups very well. That is the most deleterious outcome of its psychosis. Although White and Black hostilities are well documented and talked about, the lynching of Native Americans and Mexican Americans that went on in the mid and southwestern states is rarely mentioned. American consciousness and history is so twisted that today Hollywood portrays yesterday’s predominantly “brown” cowboys in the erroneous image of blond haired and blue eyed John Wayne. Intergroup competition, mistrust, hatred and violence are as old as the New England witch hunts, Southern White terror and abuse and exploitation of immigrants to America.

But intergroup competition and mistrust, intergroup hostilities in the face of reason and laws is not new. What is new is the proliferation of guns in our country–both urban and suburban, legal and illegal. Mistrust and divisions between groups that increasingly fuel and dominate our electoral politics and discourse do not bode well for an America that is already on guard about teenagers shooting up our schools and theaters, disgruntled and unstable young people blowing up Federal Buildings in Oklahoma, and homeland terrorism born of immigrants from anticommunism wars that armed and trained religious minorities throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East. History is very much with us and we are doomed to repeat it. The violence that ensued between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin is very much embedded in racial history and mistrust. Mistakes happen, but guns have to be carrier by choice and how we define and treat one another in any situation has roots in how we were brought up and how “the other” looks and “feels” to us.

Hope lies in the hearts and minds of today’s young. But it will not survive for long if we allow police departments, States like Florida and the media establishment to make the mistakes and the politically motivated laws that promote vigilantism and hostility between neighbors. For example, the stand your ground law apparently does. What kind of society have we become that we allow excessive use of violence no matter what? In a diverse society where so many of us treat one another as “the other” or “the stranger” we cannot afford laws and court systems that allow anyone to define another person, and based on how they define that person, feel fear for their lives and kill them. That is insane and that is what is wrong with the Florida court system today.

Something is terribly wrong in American justice today. On the one hand, there is this slavery and civil rights history that is somewhat alien to most of today’s young people (today’s young people, of any race or ethnicity) and is somewhat stuck in the past for the rest of us. Civil rights is no longer about black and white. The country is much different today and in important ways the current generation that will matter, in terms of what happens in the next quarter century (young people between the ages of 15 to 35) is up at bat.

What are young people on all sides and from all communities going to do to make the future America kinder and gentler? What ever happened to community and neighborhood?

Florida justice on trial as the nation watches the justification of profiling and following that led to a senseless killing.

“George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter …”

One of the key constructs of American immigration policy is family. When people request entry into our country their immediate family members are given priority. This reflects one of the most basic values of our American community. When it comes to people who have come here via non sanctioned immigration routes, the policy is no longer applicable. And there in lies the rub–the policy has not worked very well over the past few decades … Even as we try to piece together four decades of uncontrolled immigration and broken immigration policy, we are still not clear about how September 11th and the recent deep recession are transforming who we are. Now immigration policy is tearing at our fabric…

The American dream, even “What is America?”, hangs in the balance as the Nation decides what to do with 40 million immigrants to this land. The act of becoming a U.S. citizen is increasingly under a public microscope of political scrutiny. The lens through which we see immigrants today is increasingly made more opaque by the currently divided American polity, and the fear and controversy brewing over our National borders.

As the country struggles with economic recessions, NSA scandals, the aftermath of homeland terrorism, and crisis in its educational, incarceration and healthcare systems, it is not in a generous mood to take in the world’s huddled masses yearning to be free.

“As Congress debates a comprehensive immigration bill, one key element under consideration is whether to offer a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants. If a bill were to pass including such a provision, how many would take advantage of the opportunity?

The answer is of course speculative. The Pew Hispanic Center has conducted surveys and analyses of government data that offer some insights – but not all of them point in the same direction.

A survey we conducted in 2012 found that more than nine-in-ten (93%) Hispanic immigrants who are not citizens said they would like to become a U.S. citizen. This was true both for those who are legal permanent residents (96%) and for those who aren’t (92%). The vast majority in the latter group is in the country illegally.

Despite this near universal expression of a desire for citizenship, our analysis of government data shows that a majority of Hispanic immigrants who are eligible to seek citizenship have not yet taken the opportunity to do so. Only 46% of Hispanic immigrants eligible to naturalize (become citizens) have, compared with 71% percent of all immigrants who are not Hispanic and are eligible to naturalize. The naturalization rate is particularly low among the largest group of Hispanic immigrants – Mexicans – among whom just 36% have naturalized.

Our 2012 survey also found that the reasons most often cited for not seeking citizenship were not speaking English (as required by a citizenship test), not being able to afford it (it costs $680 to apply for citizenship), and just not yet having gotten around to trying.”

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